Green Capitalism

Why It Can’t Work

What should be done to resolve the climate crisis? Daniel Tanuro argues that government measures – eco-taxes, commodification of natural resources and carbon trading – do not tackle the main problem: the drive for profit. Evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other sources demonstrates the impossibility of a sustainable “green capitalism.” Green Capitalism includes a critique of popular writers on the environmental crisis, ranging from Jared Diamond to Hans Jonas, and it discusses the economic and technological transition scenarios. It also includes a critical assessment of the contributions of Marxist writers such as John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett and Ernest Mandel.

“A lucid and rigorous demonstration that climate change cannot be overcome unless capitalism is overcome. The scourge of humanity is also the scourge of nature. This is a great achievement: putting forth the necessary contours of the direction that must be taken if we are to be equal to the greatest challenge ever faced by humankind.”

— Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature

“The climate crisis is at a critical moment while millions despair that no action is being taken. The difficulties our ‘world leaders’ have in taking meaningful action do not spring out of nowhere but from their refusal to understand that this crisis is the consequence of the globalised, neoliberal economic system. This book argues that we cannot simply green our current society, but that we need a more thorough, more fundamental social transformation. We also need to ensure that the struggle for a better world has built into its DNA the pursuit of an ecologically sustainable society.”

Authors

Daniel Tanuro is an agricultural engineer. His previously published articles include “21st Century Socialists must be Ecosocialists,” in The Global Fight for Climate Justice, and “Marxism, Energy, and Ecology: The Moment of Truth,” in Capitalism Nature Socialism.